Today, many large stores, small convenience stores, airports, hospitals, and other publicly used front entrances employ the use of automatic electrically motorized sliding (usually metal and glass) doors. These doors can be of single door, biparting double doors on a single track, and biparting double doors on an overlapping track types. These tracks are above the doors and the doors hang down from these tracks. The tracks are part of the automatic door system assembly which means that first the automatic door system is installed and then the doors are hung from these automatic door systems.
The commercial automatic door systems are therefore strong and can overcome the inertia and move the doors using an electrical motor. The doors are fastened to the automatic system via hanging brackets. These brackets are connected to wheeled devices which run along the overhead track. A belt is used to bring the motor drive force to the wheeled devices and allows the door(s) to be pushed or pulled open or closed.
These commercial automatic door systems have now become very reliable and safe. The use of a microcontroller has done this. The system can sense the end of the door travel for both opening and closing, thus always re-adjusting itself. It can also sense when it hits an object or person and can stop and back off. What is also available; and which makes this product even more desirable for use in the home, is that these systems can use infrared motion detectors to determine automatically when to open and when to close the door(s).
With such systems available today, the use of such automation seems natural for use in the private residential home, especially the patio or deck sliding door entrance. Many homes make use of glass sliding doors which also include a sliding screen door. Other homes use the non-sliding type door (also called atrium door) but even with this type of door, a sliding screen door is also used.
The home residential market in the United States today expects usage of automatic garage door openers in nearly 100% of the homes. If the technology is available, the demand for the convenience of automatic patio doors appears likely. Advantages include the ability to have the doors open automatically while your hands are full, making sure the screen door is shut behind you, or making sure the glass door is shut behind you to keep heat or air-conditioning from escaping. This system is also good for the disabled.
There have already been a number of solutions for automation of the residential sliding door suggested such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,890,744 issued to Gallis, U.S. Pat. No. 4,893,435 issued to Shalit, U.S. Pat. No. 5,325,628 issued to Yingling, U.S. Pat. No. 5,622,007 issued to Archer, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,634,298 issued to Slopack. The claims made for these solutions include lower cost, ability to be retrofitted to existing residential sliding doors, and certain automatic features.
The goal of the claim of this disclosure is to make use of the more readily available existing automatic door systems used in commercial buildings today. The advantage of using existing commercial building products is their proven quality and reliability over decades. These commercial building type automatic door systems also incorporate the latest in sensor technology and safety features including infrared broken beam safety opening and pressure sensitive safety opening of the doors. These systems include automatic door opening and closing positioning calibration every time the unit is turned on which is perfect for the residential home owner who would be switching this automatic door system on and off daily.